In today’s entertainment industry, it can be hard to keep up with the new faces that seem to be cropping up every which way. It seems that every new TV show or movie yields the latest attractive 20-something talent that makes the internet buzz for a brief period of time. The latest product coming out of Hollywood is rising actress Tilly Norwood.
Norwood can best be visually described as a young, thin white woman in her early 20s with long, brown hair and big brown eyes. Besides her physical description fitting the bill for multiple fresh faces, her Instagram further proves her to be like most young adults — whether famous or ordinary — as she is seen enjoying iced coffee and pulling late nights for work. Despite this normalcy that seems entirely unprovoking, there’s one thing that makes Norwood completely stand out — she is created entirely from artificial intelligence.
While at a quick glance she may appear to be real, Norwood is the unique creation of Xicoia. With a tagline reading “a legacy built to last forever,” Xicoia is a talent agency offshoot of AI-focused production studio Particle6. CEO Eline Van der Velden founded the company in 2015 and has shifted focus towards computer-generated IP in recent years.
Before the recent public buzz about Norwood, she made her debut back in July of this year when Particle6 put out the comedy sketch “AI Commissioner.” Being entirely AI-generated, from the script to the visuals to the voiceover, the internet’s reaction to the sketch was that of confusion and fear.
Beyond notions that the short video was extremely poor quality and uncanny due to its untraditional origins, many commenters found the plot extremely hard to follow, noting that the words being said by the characters felt like they didn’t illustrate any real point — as if they were speaking complete gibberish.
A real concern that comes with the increasing prevalence of AI-generated videos is how it will affect the standards of quality from production studios. One of the biggest commonly understood reasons as to why studios are starting to use AI in their films is to cut costs, as using AI to de-age an actor or fix a good take with a weird expression is a much cheaper alternative to more traditional CGI methods.
As seen with “AI Commissioner,” many film fanatics and broader users of the internet agree that the current state of AI generated video is extremely poor, and certainly not yet — or ever will be — a valid replacement for the previous standard of video editing technology. Common fears are that the film industry will start to see industry standards stray even further into the area of pure cash-grab, away from real attempts by artists to tell stories.
Other concerns with the sketch and the existence of Norwood are fears of AI taking the jobs of human actors, a sentiment commonly seen with the rapid advancement of AI. An official statement from the Screen Actors Guild makes their opposition plain and simple — refusing to even use the pronoun “she” in reference to the character. They outright disavow the notion that Norwood can be considered an actor, as “it has no life experience to draw from, no emotion.”
At its simplest, AI-generated material draws from a database of pre-existing material — it doesn’t create anything “new,” rather it mashes together different pieces of human-made work so that it can be unrecognizable enough to pass off as new. The performances and faces of real actors are the only reason an AI actress can act out any type of scene possible. It capitalizes on the hard work of real people without giving them any credit.
If the trend of AI actors catches on — and it might, as evident by the multiple agents interested in signing Norwood according to Van der Velden — it could cost real actors their jobs.
The final and perhaps most distressing major concern raised by many is the consequences of creating a female personality that does whatever she’s told. Actress Betty Gilpin, best known for portraying Crystal in the 2020 film “The Hunt,” wrote an open letter addressed to Norwood where she frames herself as giving expert advice to an actress that’s just starting out.
In reference to her own experiences with misogyny and objectification in the industry, Gilpin recalls how “they’d treat [her] like property, and that felt like handcuffs,” referencing the lack of control she felt over herself. She then offers a more devastating outlook when applying this fear to Norwood, summarizing a lot of the main criticism towards the budding actress.
“Maybe that’s why you were created. Property without zits or opinions,” said Gilpin.
Norwood is notably an aggressive manifestation of Eurocentric, unattainable beauty standards.
With the bounds of the human mind being the only limit for what situations Norwood could appear in, the implications are most certainly distressing. In the wrong hands, this computer-generated mass of pixels made to look like a real woman without the ability to consent could be abused to create endless forms of exploitative scenes, which in turn can fuel real violence against women.
“AI Commissioner” already features a depiction of the character sobbing on a talk show, and while seemingly innocent, it is definitely off-putting when put in context of the possibilities of what kinds of disturbing content can be created. The already existing explicit deepfake crisis offers an unsettling look into the possibilities of where this tool could go.
In a response to the backlash on the character’s official Instagram, Van der Velden revealed the attitude that fueled its creation: she believes that “AI [is not] a replacement for people, but a new tool — a new paintbrush” and “hope[s] we can welcome AI as part of the wider artistic family: one more way to express ourselves.” Whether that is the actual intention or not behind the personality, we may never truly know. We can only watch where this development takes the future of entertainment.
